The last session of parliament was the longest for 100 years. At the previous state opening, the Queen had been on the throne for a mere 58 years. She looks a little more elderly these days, a little more stooped, and she walked with that slight caution that you would have if you were carrying the weight of a large bag of potatoes on your head. Or a crown as we call it.

You could hardly call it an austerity opening, though looking round the House of Lords I could see only about a dozen tiaras. The place still looked like a festival of bling, a convention of white rappers all desperate to show how minted they were. The event was designed hundreds of years ago to convince continental ambassadors that this wet, windswept country off the west coast of Europe was immensely wealthy. That might well be part of the intention today.

Samantha Cameron was in the gallery, wearing a simple black jacket and no hat – a stylish move when you contemplated the riot of scarlet, gold and ermine below. It might possibly be the last occasion these peers can get together with all their finery if, though it seems highly unlikely, parliament gets round to getting rid of the whole the lot of them before the next state opening.

We could follow events outside on the TV screens. A black coach arrived and out came a crown. Yes, the crown has a coach to itself! No one can say that public transport is in a mess when even our crowns travel on time, in luxury.

Having been helped out of the coach, the crown was carried by the Lord Great Chamberlain, the Marquess of Cholmondeley, or Dave Rocksavage as he is known to his pals in the film business, in which he works.

He bore it like an aged waiter in the Tour d'Argent, terrified of dropping it, but knowing that a scrumptious pressed duck would be revealed when he lifted it up.

The Lord Speaker, Lady D'Souza, appeared in her formal clothing, all black and gold, a long train held up by a train bearer.

You'd imagine that Lord Speakers have been dressed like that since mediaeval times but, in fact, the office was only invented in 2006. So not only do we have ancient flummery, we can do brand new, off-the-shelf 21st-century flummery, too! No other nation can make this claim.

Ken Clarke, whose day job is justice secretary, but who also moonlights as the Lord High Chancellor of England, appeared looking grumpy. He isn't a grumpy person; it's just his default expression. He was carrying what looked like the cushion cover your aunt spent months embroidering. It contained the speech.

Then suddenly, at 11.17, silence fell on the chamber, broken only by the traditional squeak of the mobile phone that one of the peers had forgotten to switch off.

The Queen and Prince Philip arrived. She was covered in diamonds. It looked as if she had been rolled in jewellery like a chicken nugget in breadcrumbs. The TV lights seared down. Every time she made the slightest movement, her entire ensemble flashed like a disco ball.

Black Rod went off to fetch the Commons, who arrived noisily. Sam Cam looked down on her husband and gave him the sweetest, tenderest smile.

The speech was the usual clanging, clanking collection of boilerplate ambitions cloaked in the language of cliche. "Promote enterprise and fair markets ... my government will strive to improve the lives of children and family ... diversity ..."

The speech is always heard in silence, as if it were the Queen's own words. For the first time I can remember, she fluffed a couple of words and twice talked about the "intelligent agencies" instead of intelligence; you too would find your epiglottis freeze if obliged to recite this stuff.

Back in the Commons, after lunch, Ed Miliband continued his improvement. He quoted Boris Johnson, now officially the only popular Tory in the country, who told his supporters in private that his campaign had survived wind, rain, the BBC, the budget and "even an endorsement from David Cameron".

In what might have been an echo of Vince Cable's "Stalin to Mr Bean" gag aimed at Gordon Brown, Miliband said that, in two years, the prime minister had gone from "David Cameron to David Brent".

Cameron was less aggressive than he has been lately, possibly because he did want to plug the Queen's speech. But he said that Labour's response to "too much borrowing, too much spending and too much debt" was more borrowing, more spending and more debt.

I saw that the bald patch on the back of the prime minister's head is now larger than a goujon; it has grown to the size of a small plaice.